David Friesen appears on more than 200 jazz albums. He has played with all the greats: from Stan Getz to Sam Rivers and from Dizzy Gillespie to Billy Harper. And of course with Mal Waldron. He appeared on 5 of his albums: One Entrance, Many Exits, Encounters, Dedication, Remembering Mal and Remembering the Moment. Part from those records he also toured extensively with Mal for multiple years in groups that consisted of names like Joe Henderson, Charlie Rouse, Eddie Henderson and Eddie Moore.
I had a 1.5 hour Zoom meeting with him and it was a pleasure talking to him. He's a very friendly and humble guy and told some great stories about Mal and his own musical career. Enjoy!
Pim:
First of all thank you very much for wanting to participate to my blog David. I truly feel honored. Sorry if my English is not always as fluent as it should be but if you don’t understand just let me know.
David Friesen:
That’s okay Pim.
Pim:
May I ask something about yourself first? You grew up in Tacoma, Washington didn’t you?
Pim:
First of all thank you very much for wanting to participate to my blog David. I truly feel honored. Sorry if my English is not always as fluent as it should be but if you don’t understand just let me know.
David Friesen:
That’s okay Pim.
Pim:
May I ask something about yourself first? You grew up in Tacoma, Washington didn’t you?
David Friesen:
Actually I was born in Tacoma but then we moved to Spokane, Washington. I grew up there mostly till the age of 8/9 or something like that and then we moved to Seattle around 1948/1949.
Pim:
At what age did you get in touch with jazz music? Was that at an early age?
David Friesen:
Well, I was around 5 years old and I was living in Spokane those years. I was playing with my little toy trucks and my sister Diane had a friend who was coming over to the house one day. We had an upright piano in the living room. He sat down and he started to play boogie woogie, you know that old style blues. I was on the floor playing with my trucks but when I heard this person play I stopped playing, looked at him and never touched my trucks again. When he left I sat down at the piano and tried to emulate what he had been playing. And that was it, from that moment I was into jazz music.
Pim:
So you did not start on bass?
David Friesen:
No, No, I started emulating on piano. Later some ukulele and then some accordion. I was playing guitar for a while. Finally in the army in Germany, that was where I picked up the upright bass. That must have been around ’71, ’72.
Pim:
According to your biography on your website you regularly played at the Penthouse when you we’re still living in Seattle in the 1960’s. You played with quite a lot of people back than and witnessed many legends passing by. Is there an appearance you still remember that made a lasting impression?
David Friesen:
Well, they all did at the time. I was playing with this group at the Penthouse, this very famous jazz club in Seattle. Wes Montgomery, Coltrane, Miles: all these musicians came trough there and I was playing opposite of them. I was hanging out with Albert Stinson, this great jazz bassist and also Jimmy Garrison who was with Coltrane. Pete LaRoca and others. I was hanging out with these people, asking questions and learning from them. Really all that time playing opposite of them was a big school for me. You know I never got my degree from university, I got my degree from the street. Street university.
Pim:
You learned trough listening?
David Friesen:
Yeah learned trough listening and by playing with them, absolutely yes.
Pim:
I know Coltrane visited Seattle in 1965 and he also played at the Penthouse. Did you witness him playing there with the classic quintet as well?
David Friesen:
Oh yeah I remember playing opposite of them. I remember Jimmy Garrison saying to me: ‘David, stay on the music stand and play with us’. And I said ‘Jimmy I am thirsty so I will go to the bar, get me some water… why don’t you guys just start play a tune and then I’ll come up and play’. Coltrane said: ‘great’, they went up and played one tune for an hour and a half. So there I was losing my opportunity to play with them. I really always was there when Coltrane was there.
Pim:
Wow, that really must have been something.
David Friesen:
Yeah, it was great. The biggest thing I learned from him: the first 30 or 40 seconds it was really Coltrane, Tyner, Garrison and Jones. After that time they became less and the music became more. That really is what they are doing. They are pushing there ego’s away: it really was all about the music.
It actually reminds me all a little about how I met my wife in Copenhagen (she is Danish). I met her at a record store there, when I was looking for a copy of Sonny Rollins’ ‘The Bridge’. I asked her to see Roland Kirk at Montmartre that night. But I also planned to see Coltrane at Tivoli. I told her that if she would join me I would sacrifice half of Coltrane’s concert for her. So we went to see Coltrane at Tivoli for the first half and went to Montmartre after. We were pretty much in front of the row but as the doors opened everybody passed us and we ended up without a seat.
Actually I was born in Tacoma but then we moved to Spokane, Washington. I grew up there mostly till the age of 8/9 or something like that and then we moved to Seattle around 1948/1949.
Pim:
At what age did you get in touch with jazz music? Was that at an early age?
David Friesen:
Well, I was around 5 years old and I was living in Spokane those years. I was playing with my little toy trucks and my sister Diane had a friend who was coming over to the house one day. We had an upright piano in the living room. He sat down and he started to play boogie woogie, you know that old style blues. I was on the floor playing with my trucks but when I heard this person play I stopped playing, looked at him and never touched my trucks again. When he left I sat down at the piano and tried to emulate what he had been playing. And that was it, from that moment I was into jazz music.
Pim:
So you did not start on bass?
David Friesen:
No, No, I started emulating on piano. Later some ukulele and then some accordion. I was playing guitar for a while. Finally in the army in Germany, that was where I picked up the upright bass. That must have been around ’71, ’72.
Pim:
According to your biography on your website you regularly played at the Penthouse when you we’re still living in Seattle in the 1960’s. You played with quite a lot of people back than and witnessed many legends passing by. Is there an appearance you still remember that made a lasting impression?
David Friesen:
Well, they all did at the time. I was playing with this group at the Penthouse, this very famous jazz club in Seattle. Wes Montgomery, Coltrane, Miles: all these musicians came trough there and I was playing opposite of them. I was hanging out with Albert Stinson, this great jazz bassist and also Jimmy Garrison who was with Coltrane. Pete LaRoca and others. I was hanging out with these people, asking questions and learning from them. Really all that time playing opposite of them was a big school for me. You know I never got my degree from university, I got my degree from the street. Street university.
Pim:
You learned trough listening?
David Friesen:
Yeah learned trough listening and by playing with them, absolutely yes.
Pim:
I know Coltrane visited Seattle in 1965 and he also played at the Penthouse. Did you witness him playing there with the classic quintet as well?
David Friesen:
Oh yeah I remember playing opposite of them. I remember Jimmy Garrison saying to me: ‘David, stay on the music stand and play with us’. And I said ‘Jimmy I am thirsty so I will go to the bar, get me some water… why don’t you guys just start play a tune and then I’ll come up and play’. Coltrane said: ‘great’, they went up and played one tune for an hour and a half. So there I was losing my opportunity to play with them. I really always was there when Coltrane was there.
Pim:
Wow, that really must have been something.
David Friesen:
Yeah, it was great. The biggest thing I learned from him: the first 30 or 40 seconds it was really Coltrane, Tyner, Garrison and Jones. After that time they became less and the music became more. That really is what they are doing. They are pushing there ego’s away: it really was all about the music.
It actually reminds me all a little about how I met my wife in Copenhagen (she is Danish). I met her at a record store there, when I was looking for a copy of Sonny Rollins’ ‘The Bridge’. I asked her to see Roland Kirk at Montmartre that night. But I also planned to see Coltrane at Tivoli. I told her that if she would join me I would sacrifice half of Coltrane’s concert for her. So we went to see Coltrane at Tivoli for the first half and went to Montmartre after. We were pretty much in front of the row but as the doors opened everybody passed us and we ended up without a seat.
On stage there was this black woman who asked us if we were still looking for a seat. That woman appeared to be Roland Kirks wife and she put us at the artists table next to Roland Kirk and Kenny Dorham. We watched the show from there but halfway the doors opened and Coltrane came in with his quartet. He sat down at the same table as us. So my first date with my wife (girlfriend at that time) we shared a table with Coltrane.
Pim:
You must have been sure that she would be the love of your life then! And of course there is a connection between them.
David Friesen: Yeah, Mal really loved Trane. He once told me that Coltrane made his tune ‘Soul Eyes’ so popular, he could survive only on the royalties it gave him.
Pim:
Yeah that composition is probably one of the things Mal is best known for. And of course his affiliation with Billie Holiday.
David Friesen:
Oh yeah he loved her too. I remember when I came in his apartment in Munich for the first time there was this huge photograph of her on the wall with something written by her like: to Mal, my love. Mal really cherished his time with her. It really was a big thing to him.
Pim:
Could you still remember how you first met Mal?
David Friesen:
There was this jazzclub in San Francisco called ‘the Keystone Corner’. Todd Barkan was the owner of it. Todd liked my music and invited me to play on New Year’s Eve there. It was a pretty big gig with names like Kenny Burrell, Sonny Stitt was there. He wanted to peer me with Mal Waldron to play duets. That must have been in the early eighties or late seventies. It was hand in glove. A perfect match. He was about to record the album ‘One Entrance, Many Exits’ at the time. I made up the name for that album by the way. He liked it. So we teamed up with Joe Henderson and Billy Higgins and made the recording for Palo Alto.
Pim:
Of course you already knew Mal back then for his affiliation with Prestige and the time before his breakdown. But were you also aware of his later work like ‘Free at Last’ for ECM or ‘Black Glory’ for Enja?
David Friesen:
Well the first time I came in touch with his music was by this record…. what was it called, maybe you could help me out.
(According to David it had a purple cover and the river Seine on it and it was probably solo piano. We talked later about it but could not find the exact album David means. It is probably Impressions to which we listened to later in the interview)
That really was the first album that got me in touch with his music.
Pim:
Do you have another personal memory or story to share?
David Friesen:
Well I remember we were on the road with Eddie Moore. Mal, Eddie Moore and me were on the road to Canada in the car for the Edmonton Jazz Festival. So we had this huge bag of cookies, the kind especially Eddie really liked. So at a moment Eddie (big Eddie) said: ‘hey Mal, would you mind pass me that bag of cookies you’ve got’? So Mal passed the bag to Eddie, who was on the back seat. After an hour or so Mal said: ‘hey Eddie, I would like to have a cookie too’. But Eddie ate all of them (laughing). It really was a huge bag. Poor Mal, he really did not knew what to say (laughing). He was so amazed by it.
But that was not all. Just before we would arrive finally at our destination my car broke down. So it was me, Eddie and Mal at the high way. Of course there were no cell phones or whatsoever during those days. So we made this truck stop and it would take our car from there. But Eddie, Mal, me and the truck driver: we all had to sit on the front seat. So Eddie was next to the door, I was next to the truck driver. And Mal’s head was on the floor with his feet sticking up Eddie (laughing).
Pim:
You have spent lots of time on the road together touring.
David Friesen:
Oh yes we drove for miles and miles all across the country.
Pim:
Did you only tour the Pacific coast of the U.S. or more than that?
David Friesen:
Yes, Canada, Austria, Germany, Italy, Belgium and also Holland.
Pim:
And did you travelled mostly by car or by train?
David Friesen:
Oh in Europe mostly by train. That was the easiest way to do it.
Pim:
Did Mal ever get tired of it?
David Friesen:
Well I remember I was in Munich and we just finished a tour all across Europe. We were about to go our own way so I asked him ‘Mal, what are you going to do tomorrow?’ He said: ‘Well I am going to pack for I leave for Japan tomorrow’. I said: ‘Mal, we just finished a month of concerts and now you are going to leave for Japan?’ He said ‘If I don’t David, I die, because playing is how I breathe. It’s my life and breath’.
He really was loved there in Japan by the way. You know what he did? He would go and visit the fishing villages over there where people were too poor to buy a concert ticket and play for them for free!
Pim:
Did you gig in Japan as well with Mal?
David Friesen:
Oh yes we drove for miles and miles all across the country.
Pim:
Did you only tour the Pacific coast of the U.S. or more than that?
David Friesen:
Yes, Canada, Austria, Germany, Italy, Belgium and also Holland.
Pim:
And did you travelled mostly by car or by train?
David Friesen:
Oh in Europe mostly by train. That was the easiest way to do it.
Pim:
Did Mal ever get tired of it?
David Friesen:
Well I remember I was in Munich and we just finished a tour all across Europe. We were about to go our own way so I asked him ‘Mal, what are you going to do tomorrow?’ He said: ‘Well I am going to pack for I leave for Japan tomorrow’. I said: ‘Mal, we just finished a month of concerts and now you are going to leave for Japan?’ He said ‘If I don’t David, I die, because playing is how I breathe. It’s my life and breath’.
He really was loved there in Japan by the way. You know what he did? He would go and visit the fishing villages over there where people were too poor to buy a concert ticket and play for them for free!
Pim:
Did you gig in Japan as well with Mal?
David Friesen:
No just, the U.S., Canada and Europe.
Pim:
Was it difficult to find gigs at the time in the U.S. in those years? Was it hard to make a living out of it?
David Friesen:
No it was okay. We had this woman (Mal’s tour manager at the time) in Salem, Oregon at the time. And with an all star line up like we had with Charlie Rouse, Eddie Henderson, Billy Higgins, Mal and me it wasn’t hard to find a place to play. Same goes for the group with Henderson.
Pim:
Mal met and married his second wife in the 1980’s: Hiromi. He was also a very busy man: lots of time on the road. How did she cope with that?
David Friesen:
Well, we never had problems when he was touring with me, probably because she saw me as a good influence. I don’t do drugs, cigarettes not even alcohol. I remember playing with him, there were always these people trying to sell him drugs. Then I would get him away from it, you know, get him out of that club. When we stopped playing together, that’s when she got more possessive of him. She was worried.
Pim:
How did you kill time on the road?
David Friesen:
We played chess of course. He always had his chess board with him. And then Mal would have these activities in the evening (laughing) and I just did my own thing practicing my bass.
Pim:
No just, the U.S., Canada and Europe.
Pim:
Was it difficult to find gigs at the time in the U.S. in those years? Was it hard to make a living out of it?
David Friesen:
No it was okay. We had this woman (Mal’s tour manager at the time) in Salem, Oregon at the time. And with an all star line up like we had with Charlie Rouse, Eddie Henderson, Billy Higgins, Mal and me it wasn’t hard to find a place to play. Same goes for the group with Henderson.
Pim:
Mal met and married his second wife in the 1980’s: Hiromi. He was also a very busy man: lots of time on the road. How did she cope with that?
David Friesen:
Well, we never had problems when he was touring with me, probably because she saw me as a good influence. I don’t do drugs, cigarettes not even alcohol. I remember playing with him, there were always these people trying to sell him drugs. Then I would get him away from it, you know, get him out of that club. When we stopped playing together, that’s when she got more possessive of him. She was worried.
Pim:
How did you kill time on the road?
David Friesen:
We played chess of course. He always had his chess board with him. And then Mal would have these activities in the evening (laughing) and I just did my own thing practicing my bass.
Pim:
What activities were those?
David Friesen:
I think he went out having dinner with friends. All kinds of things. The time we hang out was traveling and playing together. And then there was some space at night: he did his thing and I did mine.
Pim:
Did you listen to music together too?
David Friesen:
Yes we did. Mal was playing duo’s with this soprano player, what’s his name again?
Pim:
Steve Lacy?
David Friesen:
Yeah Steve Lacy. We once did a quartet in France too with Oliver Johnson on drums, that was a great concert. Mal had a lot of tapes of him playing with Lacy, stuff that was never released officially. Very nice music. So we listened to that kind of stuff when we were on the road.
Pim:
What else did you do together?
David Friesen:
We made jokes. Lot’s of jokes. I could not remember one of them but they sure were funny. We laughed a lot. Also during one of those drives Mal told me about his overdose. That he just forgot how to play. And listening to his old records he wondered how he played that way. He really had to relearn everything and his playing changed.
With me he never took any drugs. I have never done any drugs myself. I don’t even drink or smoke. I collected wine for some time but never drink it. But in 1987 we were doing the recording of ‘Remembering the Moment’ for Soul Note and I introduced Mal to Jim Pepper. I was the one who put the session together. They made some nice recordings together.
Unfortunately Jim Pepper was addicted to drugs. He was a dear friend and very compassionate person. But unfortunately he was an addict. I’m not sure but I sometimes think Mal got hooked again. His Japanese wife Hiromi was pretty suspicious of it sometimes calling, being very angry and thinking that people got Mal on drugs again.
Pim:
What is it that makes Mal such a great musician in your opinion?
David Friesen:
His focus and concentration. He was fully immersed in the music. I remember a gig in Los Angeles, at the Hi Hat on Sunset. Shelly Manne organized jam sessions there. We had a group there with Frank Morgan on alto saxophone, Mal at the piano, myself on bass and Philly Joe Jones on drums. It was in the lobby of an hotel: there was no stage so we were all settled on the floor. I was facing Mal with Philly Joe on my right and Morgan on my left. All of a sudden a women, 16 or 17 years old, just sits down next to Mal at the piano on the piano seat. So I am watching Mal but he doesn’t move . He does not look to his left or right. He’s head buried. After finishing the tune Mal just looks at me and the management took her away. But I don’t even think Mal noticed it.
Pim:
Did you play a set repertoire or did you make a program of compositions?
David Friesen:
No, Mal and I played free music, in the sense that we created it on the spot. We mostly just played some compositions by himself, some standards and some Monk tunes.
Pim:
The music you made on your first record as a duo, Encounters on Muse, also contains music that does not necessarily fit in more traditional jazz patterns. Songs like you’re solo bass statement: ‘For Toby’ but also ‘Imagination’and ‘Night Wind’. On my blog I called it ambient and world music like influence. We’re those influences from your hand?
David Friesen:
Of course Pim but it was mainly influencing each other. When you have two people coming together and you’re listening to each other. The whole idea of practicing in my opinion gives a jazz artist confidence, technique and flexibility. In that way he could respond creatively to what he is hearing. And this was really the case with Mal and I. So the things he played influenced me and the stuff I played influenced him.
Pim:
What would you say was the biggest influence he had on you?
David Friesen:
I think the concentration. The intensity. Also his use of space and his timing. He had a very strong timing.
Pim:
What group or record you made with Mal did you like best?
David Friesen:
Well I really liked the trio I had with Mal and Eddie Moore. Also the group with Eddie Henderson, Charlie Rouse, Billy Higgins, myself and Mal. We toured the west coast multiple times. I especially liked those larger ensembles for Mal was like some sort of anker, settling and structuring everything. That really was a quality of his which he could not show when we were playing as a duo. I don’t like it more or less than the duets but it was something different.
Pim:
You’re recording affiliation with Mal ended in 1987. Did you keep in touch with him?
David:
Oh yeah we did. We met a couple of times in Europe and hang out. We would sometimes talk to each other on the telephone.
Pim:
Do you ever listen to the music you made together and is there a recording you like best?
David Friesen:
No to be honest I am very busy at the moment. I am playing with my own group nowadays with Joe Manis on tenor and soprano saxophone and Charlie Doggett on drums. In 2019 we went to Ukraine together performing with a huge orchestra playing my music. We had 4 sold out gigs there and flew to Prague the next day but then all gigs got canceled for the Covid situation. So now I am mostly at home playing with my own trio. I don’t even listen to my own music right now.
Pim:
David, you have played bass with so many jazz greats: Billy Harper, Sam Rivers, Joe Henderson, Ted Curson, Kenny Drew, Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie and so many more. Which collaboration do you still have fond memories of?
David Friesen:
Oh I really have fond memories of all of them. I was recently talking to somebody about Billy Harper. I remember driving back recently and I discovered he was in town (Seattle) with his group, The Cookers. I knew all of the guys in that band. So I really wanted to see Billy, for both he and I are real boxing fans. He has every film of the early Muhammad Ali fights. Even when he was still fighting as Cassius Clay and was still a light heavyweight. That’s how we spent time together.
So I was standing at the bar there and we had not seen each other for a while. He saw me standing and came of stage and said: ‘is that you inside there?’ (laughing). That’s typical Billy Harper.
Pim:
What strikes me is the versatility in music and personalities. One must really know how to play if you could play with both Sam Rivers and Stan Getz. Is it easy for you to adjust to the musician you are playing with? How do you do that?
David Friesen:
You just listen… You take your eyes off yourself and listen. You respond creatively to what you hear. Just listen and associate with the people you are playing with. I have nothing to prove. In my book I say: ‘Listening is my life preserver in an ocean of sound, without it I drown’. And that’s the truth. I don’t know that much.
If you look at the sun. Let’s say you are in Amsterdam and you are looking at the sun. You would say that sun would fit in Amsterdam. But the closer you come to the sun, the larger it gets and the smaller you become. And it’s like that with the source of music. The closer you get to the source of music, the more you find out how little you know. That’s what I mean to say.
I remember attending a class one day and said: ‘Remember, I knew more ten years ago then I know now’. Than one of the students said from the back: ‘Then why didn’t you come ten years ago?’ (laughing) I said: It would have been the same thing then (laughing)
I really can’t play music without listening. Unless I am playing solo.
Pim:
Do you sometimes play solo bass?
David Friesen:
Oh yeah I do that. I play this bass right now (shows his bass). It’s an amplified one with a pick up. But I don’t have a pick up on my acoustic. I am really a purist. It was made in 1795 and was used in an orchestra that Beethoven once conducted. There’s no way I am going to put a pick up on that instrument. But if I play with a drummer I can’t be heard. So that’s why I have this bass.
Pim:
One last question that I also wanted to ask you: how are you coping with the whole Covid situation. How does it affect you?
David Friesen:
Well you can’t play any gigs of course. But I play these live streams. There’s a concert coming up on the 29th of March with my trio. It’s especially for my European fans. The link will be on my Facebook page. It’ll be 12 o clock noon here so that’s 8 pm your time. It’s a four camera shoot and the sound will be great. My last tour got cancelled, but I am now planning a tour for the March 2022.
Part from that I am doing all kinds of stuff, mostly online like lecturing and teaching but also giving concerts on YouTube trough live streaming.
Pim:
David, thank you so much for your time and participating. Please stay safe and take care!
David Friesen:
Thanks Pim it was a pleasure talking to you.
Please support David Friesen and visit his website, social media accounts and live streams on YouTube!
Website: http://www.davidfriesen.net/
Teaching: https://jazzanywhere.com/jazz-essentials/
FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/davidfriesenjazz/
Insta: https://www.instagram.com/david_friesen_music/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKpR2anDQ14rTAvhIX8n0mQ/videos
Great interview, thanks to both of you. Brought back some of my own fondest memories of hearing Mal and David play together in Oregon.
ReplyDelete